NY Times Comment, David Holowka, July 14, 2026

It would rezone Chelsea to midtown-like density and shadow the High Line, Chelsea Park, and the historic south-facing grounds of the General Theological Seminary. It would eliminate an estimated 260 public-housing bedrooms. It would compact the residents of 18 public-housing buildings into only six new, much larger and taller ones that would be harder to monitor and secure. It would move older tenants from the safety of their all-senior building into one of these dangerously oversized new ones among tenants of all ages, a fate the seniors desperately fear. It would destroy 370 mature trees in what a federal report calls the city’s zone of least tree cover, least temperature reduction by trees, least pollution removal by trees, and least runoff avoided by trees—an affront to the very principle of environmental justice given the disproportionate impact on public-housing residents. 

It would squander a staggering amount of embodied carbon on needless replacement of structurally sound buildings during a climate crisis. It would dedicate public land to more luxury than public-housing apartments. Its gentrification would increase Chelsea’s average rent. It would turn an area totaling more than three city blocks into a construction zone for at least 16 years, subjecting homes and schools to noise, disruption, fine particulate, and toxins released by disturbance of highly contaminated soil—contamination we know of, thanks to Layla’s research. 

Perhaps least excusably, the project would use government funding to build new segregated housing. 

Its entire design hinges on replacing the public-housing buildings before beginning the mixed-income ones, locking in segregation that would obviously profit NYCHA’s private-sector development partner, the Related Companies. To support the project but not its segregation, as Erik Bottcher has claimed to, is hypocrisy, like supporting the Confederacy but not slavery.   

The plan would never have gotten off the ground but for the lie that renovating the NYCHA buildings would cost as much as replacing them. The agency now admits that this claim didn’t include the cost of demolition and new-building design. Documents obtained by Layla through Freedom of Information Law show the project cost has ballooned to $2.4 billion, about twice NYCHA’s renovation estimate. Only late in the game did the agency announce that revenue from the mixed-income units would go into its general fund for use throughout the city rather than improving Chelsea’s public housing as originally promised—in other words, that the plan was really about making Chelsea its cash cow. 

When NYCHA and Related entered into a Master Development Agreement formalizing the plan, Layla characteristically put it under a microscope. She found that Related’s required capital investment in the project and financial penalty for withdrawing from it were inconsequential amounts. The developer would have no real skin in the project’s success or failure. If things went south, it could impose new demands for keeping the plan alive, effectively holding it hostage. That would be in line with what it did after winning the 2021 Request for Proposals to renovate, and specifically not demolish, Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea. Once Related had a lock on that project, it announced that its own conditions assessment had found the buildings in poorer condition than NYCHA had previously determined. Without ever sharing that estimate or providing a shred of evidence that renovation couldn’t proceed according to the original plan, Related blew the project scope up into a vast no-bid public contract for full demolition and replacement plus 3,500 mixed-income units. 

Which brings us to a critical point about Layla’s unique opposition to demolition. Imagine the leverage Related would have if any buildings were removed and the project was stalled with gaping holes in the ground and relocated tenants marooned in temporary apartments. 

Alongside many of the tenants, Layla supports saving Section 9, which she rightly calls “the only true public housing.” The other City Council candidates have thrown in the towel on Section 9, noting that its federal funding couldn’t be secured even when Democrats were in power. Layla argues that it’s not a law of nature that prevents funding but a lack of political will. She plans to use land-use authority, budget negotiations, and oversight authority—tools with which she is singularly familiar—to work with city, state, and federal partners.

—David  Holowka, CB4 Member, Community Activist, Architect, Comments Here